Last year I mentioned that I attended The Open Group Architecture Practitioners Conference In Toronto and that I was very excited about the direction that the conversations went – namely the need for EA to become more of a strategic business discipline. This month, I attended the version of this event in Seattle. Again, I was encouraged. This time by the theme moving past need and into practice. The plenary sessions, which are the general sessions that are open to Open Group members and non-members alike, all focused on moving EA away from IT and towards the business. With titles like “Changing the Conversation” and “The Language of Business Architecture” it is obvious that the conference tried to get people to think differently. Some of the side tracks also promoted this concept, such as “Business Driven SOA,” “Translating Business Speak into IT Speak” and “Presenting EA to C-Level and The Board.” Hopefully, they will continue and others will follow.
My presentation was part of the “Language of Business Architecture” session, focusing on the dynamics and language of Business Architecture as it evolves from a commonly-accepted, but scarcely-executed domain of EA into a necessary part of a compelling and successful business transformation effort. The presentation is available here.
Also, following my presentation, Dana Gardner of Interarbor Solutions interviewed me for the BriefingsDirect series. The topic of the conversation centered around the points that I made during my presentation on the language of business architecture, relaying the effectives ways that organizations can become successful in the development of transformational enterprise business architecture.